Rabbi Ravid Rosen says the pope was asked to do so during a meeting with a Jewish group Thursday and that the pontiff replied he would give “serious consideration” to the request to wait.

Frances D’emilio And Marta Falconi, Associated Press Writers

Some Jewish leaders and historians have said Pius didn’t speak out enough during World War II to save Jews during Hitler’s extermination campaign.

Rosen spoke after the Vatican had rejected Jewish groups’ requests for the immediate opening of its secret archives on Pius XII’s papacy during the Holocaust years.

Above: Pope Pius XII

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said the requests to see the wartime archives were “understandable,” but added Thursday that cataloguing some 16 million documents is expected to take another six or seven years.

Currently, the archives can be consulted only up through the papacy of Pius XII’s predecessor, Pius X, which ended in early 1939, a few months before World War II began in Europe.

Pius XII was Pius XI’s secretary of state, as Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli. Some scholars who have examined archive documents dealing with the future Pius XII’s diplomacy say Pacelli was a sometimes indecisive diplomat as Nazism and Fascism took hold in parts of Western Europe.

Despite the wholehearted attempts by the Obama campaign to state categorically that Barack Obama is a Christian, he does not believe all that his pastor Rev. Wright believes and says, he supports the State of Israel and has little use for Louis Farrakhan; questions continue to arise….

By Richard Cohen
The Washington Post
January 15, 2008

Barack Obama is a member of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ. Its minister, and Obama’s spiritual adviser, is the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright’s daughters serve as publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said “truly epitomized greatness.” That man is Louis Farrakhan.
Above: Mr. Farrakhan

Maybe for Wright and some others, Farrakhan “epitomized greatness.” For most Americans, though, Farrakhan epitomizes racism, particularly in the form of anti-Semitism. Over the years, he has compiled an awesome record of offensive statements, even denigrating the Holocaust by falsely attributing it to Jewish cooperation with Hitler — “They helped him get the Third Reich on the road.” His history is a rancid stew of lies.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Said “God damn America”
during church sermon. Obama was a member of
the church and contributed money for some 20 years….

It’s important to state right off that nothing in Obama’s record suggests he harbors anti-Semitic views or agrees with Wright when it comes to Farrakhan. Instead, as Obama’s top campaign aide, David Axelrod, points out, Obama often has said that he and his minister sometimes disagree. Farrakhan, Axelrod told me, is one of those instances.

Fine. But where I differ with Axelrod and, I assume, Obama is that praise for an anti-Semitic demagogue is not a minor difference or an intrachurch issue. The Obama camp takes the view that its candidate, now that he has been told about the award, is under no obligation to speak out on the Farrakhan matter. It was not Obama’s church that made the award but a magazine. This is a distinction without much of a difference. And given who the parishioner is, the obligation to speak out is all the greater. He could be the next American president. Where is his sense of outrage?

CHICAGO (AP) ― The Nation of Islam, a secretive movement generally closed to outsiders, has planned a rare open-to-the public event at its Chicago-based headquarters in what the Minister Louis Farrakhan deemed a “new beginning” for the group.

Hundreds of religious leaders of different faiths have been invited to the event planned for Sunday, a rededication of the group’s historic Mosque Maryam on the city’s South Side. Farrakhan is scheduled to speak.

“We have restored Mosque Maryam completely, and we will dedicate it to the universal message of Islam, and the universal aspect of the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad,” Farrakhan said in an invitation letter. “It represents for the Nation of Islam, a new beginning.”

The event comes just weeks after the death of Imam W.D. Mohammed, the son of Nation founder Elijah Muhammad who broke with the group and moved thousands of African-Americans toward mainstream Islam.

The Nation purchased the mosque, a former Greek Orthodox church, in 1972 and has since been making renovations. The stately 1948 structure, embellished with a golden dome and topped with an Islamic crescent moon, is adorned with Quranic verses in Arabic.

Experts say opening the mosque’s doors to the public is a calculated move.

“It is a very conscious effort to open the mosque up to the community and to rededicate the community to learning about Islam,” said Aminah McCloud, a professor of Islamic studies at DePaul University. “Previously, the Nation has been open to people coming to visit it, but its members don’t generally go anywhere else … now there is a concerted effort.”

While the Nation has espoused black nationalism and self-reliance since it was founded in the 1930s, in recent years members have reached out to other groups. For instance, the Nation has a Latino liaison and has become involved in immigrant rights rallies and marches. Also, the Minister Ishmael Muhammad, a top assisting minister at the mosque and widely thought to be a potential successor to Farrakhan, has talked about unity between all people, at times speaking in Spanish.

Farrakhan, 75, has haltingly tried to move the Nation toward traditional Islam, which considers the American movement heretical because of its view of Elijah Muhammad as a prophet — among other novel teachings. Orthodox Islam teaches that there has been no prophet after Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.

He’s also played down some of the group’s more controversial beliefs. The Nation of Islam has taught that whites are descended from the devil and that blacks are the chosen people of Allah.

NEW YORK – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad questioned the official version of the Sept. 11 attacks and defended the right to cast doubt on the Holocaust in a tense appearance at Columbia University, whose president accused the hard-line leader of behaving like “a petty and cruel dictator.”

Ahmadinejad smiled at first but appeared increasingly agitated, decrying the “insults” and “unfriendly treatment.” ColumbiaPresident Lee Bollinger and audience members took him to task over Iran’s human-rights record and foreign policy, as well as Ahmadinejad’s statements denying the Holocaust and calling for the disappearance of Israel.

“When you come to a place like this it makes you simply ridiculous,” Bollinger said. “The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history.”

Ahmadinejad rose, also to applause, and after a religious invocation, said Bollinger’s opening was “an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here.”

NEW YORK – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the stage at Columbia University on Monday to a blistering reception from the president of the school, who said the hard-line leader behaved like “a petty and cruel dictator.”

Ahmadinejad smiled as ColumbiaPresident Lee Bollinger took him to task over Iran’s human-rights record and foreign policy, and Ahmadinejad’s statements denying the Holocaust and calling for the disappearance of Israel.